Its classic politics: find the wedge issue, the thing that creates a deep division in the other side. Find an area where their philosophy is at odds with their policy, and let the true believers battle it out with the hypocrites.
Which brings us to defense spending. Start with the Bush wars. Here's a sensible question, and you'll never believe who asked it:
Reagan asked in 1980: are you better off than you were four years ago? Are American interests in the world more secure today than before the decision to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan?
That little gem fell from the lips of Grover Norquist, in an interview published on Wednesday. He's not the only one on the right starting to realize that conservatives have a little problem on this issue.
The conventional wisdom on the right about defense spending runs along two major lines of argument, both of them patently ridiculous.
The first is that cutting our $650 billion dollar military budget will somehow "embolden our enemies", as Paul Ryan has repeatedly claimed.
This one really is a howler. Does he think Iran's mullahs, when pondering whether to move forward with their nuclear weapons program, think, "Obama stopped production of F-22 fighter planes, and they've only got 187 of them. Wussies, they'll never stand up to us." Does Al Qaeda figure in to their calculations that we just rolled out our 11th aircraft carrier? Would rioters surrounding a US embassy not be there if Romney's plan to boost defense spending to 4% of GDP was implemented?
Uh, no. Quite the opposite, actually. Our invading Iran's neighbors, one of them on a completely fabricated pretext, is the most powerful of incentives to acquire a nuclear deterrent. Do a lot of sabre rattling, and other people might decide they need sabres, too.
The second line of argument is where it becomes a true wedge issue: that defense spending cannot be cut because it will result in a loss of jobs and economic activity. Barney Frank has a delicious term for this viewpoint: weaponized Keynesianism.
It is the view that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.
In fairness, there is some daylight between Keynesians and Republicans on this issue: Keynes argued for the stimulus of government spending only when the economy was in a slump. For many Republicans, such spending must be perpetual.
In case you think the comparison of their argument to they very kind of government stimulus they decry is a stretch, here's a statement by Representative Randy Forbes (R-VA) in a Romney campaign conference call in July on the impact of sequestration on defense spending:
”There would be “a huge impact on beauty salons, restaurants, car dealers, the entire economy.”
As Ramesh Ponnuru, senior editor at National Review
pointed out, "The Republican position on federal spending could not be clearer: It doesn’t create jobs. Except when it goes to defense contractors."
But while the likes of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, Senator John McCain and Senator John Cornyn have all been arguing that defense spending must not be cut on economic grounds, there is a growing appetite on the right to stop treating the Pentagon as sacred and beyond scrutiny. The editor in chief of ultra-conservative Reason magazine put it succinctly:
If conservatives want to push forward on reducing spending on Medicaid and other domestic programs, they should show that they take their own limited government philosophy seriously by pushing for defense cuts
Such a view has traction with the poster boy for tea party fiscal constipation,
Rand Paul. Proving the old theory about broken clocks still holds true in the digital age, the son of the Ferengi of American politics had this to say about the Pentagon's budget: "Well why don’t we jettison some of the crap here we’re doing we don’t need?"
Survey the landscape for a moment. The Republican party's nominees for President and Vice President, as well as the party's point men on defense in both the Senate and the House, insist that defense spending cannot, must not, be cut.
Meanwhile, the right's most powerful tax crusader, some of the leading pundits, and at least one of the most prominent tea party legislators in the country insist it must go on the chopping block. Its a sentiment so simple, so straightforward, that even Rand Paul, one of the dumbest human beings ever to set foot in the well of the Senate, understands it.
That is the very definition of a wedge issue: simple, huge, and deeply divisive. Here's a chance for the Obama administration to find some bipartisan consensus, forging a coalition from both parties to put forth a real plan to reduce the money we waste on security.
And make no mistake that there is a huge scope for savings. Let's say we went back to the spending levels of 2000 - which was not exactly a lean time for our military. The FY2000 base defense budget was $295 billion, which in inflation-adjusted 2011 dollars comes to $380.45 billion (using CPI). The FY2011 base defense budget was $549 billion - we're not even including Homeland Security or appropriations for the wars in this. Just the base defense budget alone could be reduced by 30%, or $169 billion per year.
That's a huge chunk of savings. Picture the tea partiers asking Republican Senators and Congresscritters why they're opposed to reducing our annual deficit by one-sixth, and why our levels of military spending in 2000 were somehow grossly inadequate.
There's your wedge issue. November 7th, the White House starts work on the second term agenda. This should be at the top.